Fun with homeopaths and meta-analyses of homeopathy trials
Homeopathy amuses me.
Well, actually it both amuses me and appalls me. The amusement comes from just how utterly ridiculous the concepts behind homeopathy are. Think about it. It is nothing but pure magical thinking. Indeed, at the very core of homeopathy is a concept that can only be considered to …

Kimball C. Atwood IV, MD
Kimball Atwood IV, MD is a practicing anesthesiologist who is also board-certified in internal medicine. He had been interested in pseudoscience for years, but became active in 2000 after a nursing conference at his own hospital advocated Therapeutic Touch, Guided Imagery, and several other implausi…

Cognitive Dissonance at the New York Times
Humans have the very odd ability to hold contradictory, even mutually exclusive, ideas in their brains at the same time. There are two basic processes at work to make this possible. The first is compartmentalization – the ideas are simply kept separate. They are trains on different tracks that…

Autism’s false prophets revealed
In the brief time that Science-Based Medicine has existed, I’ve become known as the vaccine blogger of the group. True, Steve Novella sometimes posts about antivaccine pseudoscience and fear-mongering (unlike me, he’s even been directly attacked by David Kirby) and both Mark Crislip and …

Update on the NIH “Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy”
A few days ago, while gathering information for last week’s post about intravenous hydrogen peroxide, I noticed this:
ACAM Supports NIH Decision to Suspend TACT Trial
September 3, 2008, Laguna Hills, Calif. — The American College for Advancement in Medicine, ACAM today announced its sup…

A Budget of Anecdotes
“If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliway’s—the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!”–Douglas Adams
I recently finished reading the book “The Joy of Pi” by David Blatner. There is a chapter about…

“Patient-Centered Care” and the Society for Integrative Oncology
Should Medical Journals Inform Readers if a Book Reviewer can’t be Objective?
At the end of last week’s post I suggested that book reviewer Donald Abrams and the New England Journal of Medicine had withheld information useful for evaluating Abrams’ review: that he is the Secretar…

The New England Journal of Medicine Disappoints
On July 31 of this year, a collective groan could be heard emanating from critics of pseudomedicine. The causative factors (which is medical bombast for “the cause”) were two book reviews published in the usually staid New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM):
Integrative Oncology: Incor…

An Herbal Cure for Peanut Allergy?
Peanut allergy is uncommon but devastating. Even a tiny trace of peanut can cause an anaphylactic reaction and death. That’s why labels specify “produced on shared equipment with nuts or peanuts” or “produced in a facility that also processes nuts.” There is no effective treatment:…